who consider the responsibilities of household and family detrimental to their best interests and burdens to be avoided, need but to note the fact that men who occupy the most desirable positions of prominence have not hesitated to assume these responsibilities. The wits are sharpened, the scope of the mind enlarged by necessity.

When parentage is once assumed, the duty and necessity for proper care and training of the offspring at once arises. It may begin before the time of birth. The earnest wish of a pregnant woman is able not only to affect the soul of the unborn child but may forecast its physique. Unfortunately, we find the best proof of this fact in freaks, rather than in the result of studied and consistent intent.

The training of child-bearing women for the advantage of posterity will one day be considered indispensable. Under the present ungoverned chances of heredity and maternity the infant is often disastrously started in a path which it is liable to follow blindly through maturity. The lower animals do nothing but copy, the ant-hill of to-day being precisely similar to the old unvarying pattern. It should be the effort of man to free the new-born of all handicaps of heredity and selfish yielding to impulses that lay their marring impression even upon the unborn. The very fact that few parents attempt to bring up their children according to the manner of their own training proves that all are inclined to experiment more or less. Let the experimenting be for the interest of those upon whom the experiment is made, however, and not a mere study for parental convenience or amusement in associating conditions.

In the swing of human progress all may not be accorded equal opportunities for proving their worth; they may suffer many undue hardships and profit by many undeserved rewards. But nothing can withhold from one the right to expand his mind and strengthen his will, nor the only real satisfaction afforded by life-that of knowing he has done his best with such means as the fates have provided, or which he has been able to create.

True types of rounded manliness and womanhood exist in every sphere, but he who is wholesome minded is ever likely to question his title to be classed among them. The human mind in its desire for high attainment, naturally seeks an understanding of the ends toward which to bend its efforts; and they may surely be found among the following:

Association of development with each detail of occupation

Choice of fit ends for expenditure of effort—

Avoidance of unprofitable investment of time-
Attention to proper physical necessities-

Education and delineation of the mental facultiesControl of soul-force and research through its unknown spheres

Expansion of the will or conscious individuality—
Transmission of effective worth unto posterity.

Can it be truthfully said that there exists any organized effort that recognizes the importance of all these lines of endeavour?

CHAPTER XIII.

GENERAL IMPROVEMENT.

"The individual withers, and the world is more and more."-TENNYSON.